


The Moon Spins

by off-ki (nightbirdrises)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Reaction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 19:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15274374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbirdrises/pseuds/off-ki
Summary: no real summary, just an absolutely tiny little reaction piece for the end of 2x26. spoilers ahead!





	The Moon Spins

**Author's Note:**

> no real summary, just an absolutely tiny little reaction piece for the end of 2x26. spoilers ahead!

A full moon spins.

It was always going to happen one day, and it was certainly always going to be sooner than expected. For as much as he decorates himself, brings out that which is him and not that other person who once walked about in lavender skin, that other person sure had a lot going on. It doesn't take a learned wizard's mental prowess to figure that out. It was going to catch up to him eventually. It would be foolish to assume that he could outrun someone else's mistakes forever if he merely danced just out of reach of his own.

That it's happening isn't what bothers him. It's that he lost track of the music and his dance faltered.

With that terrible, smirking face looking down at him - really, one could be much more tasteful in their choice of tattoos - it's his own blood that drains too suddenly, his own eyesight that blurs and begins to fade.

There's a beautiful full moon beyond that awful face, even though nightfall couldn't have arrived again so quickly. It spins.

Hard, cold ground connects with his back. It doesn't hurt. A hint of confusion crosses that smirk, and he musters a grin of his own in return. Still and forever the unexpected, at least. The blade does hurt, but not as much as it probably should. It only shocks darkness through his vision, pushes him closer to passing out.

A flash of whirling blue in retaliation - she misses. He focuses his eyes on the face instead of the much more appealing full moon behind it. To his indignation, the face turns away momentarily to say something. He doesn't hear it; sound is nothing but empty space. Empty.

When the face turns back, the weapon raised to cast a last darkness into his consciousness, he spits into it. Red splashes across that unsightly visage, and it's a little more bearable with a bit of color. Blood on that face, blood on those hands that dared to snatch away so much of what was only the second foundation of support he had ever known. And they were finally starting to act like a functional group of people, too.

He sees more red, but the moon begins to slow its spin. A prayer, asking the darkness to grant him protection and the moonlight to lead the way.

It's only the full moon, and it spins. Spins. The sound of a coin's pirouetting dance and it's a silver piece, landing face-down in total darkness.

He instinctively reaches for the silver, but it's snatched away by a flurry of feathers. A yellow eye fixates on him and it's a raven, offering little comfort on its own. But moonlight returns, sourceless, and the raven takes flight along its path with the silver piece in tow. He follows.

If this takes him to where he can have a long talk with the one who left him in that haunted shell, all the better. He is still Mollymauk Tealeaf, after all. He lived and died as no one else.

But if it returns him to that haunted shell, still himself, he finds he's not opposed to the possibility. If nothing else, Mollymauk Tealeaf's second, more practiced dance would cleave that face into shreds, then continue onwards to whatever wonders life may still have for him.

After all, he is - unexpectedly and always - Mollymauk Tealeaf. Long may he reign.


End file.
